It was definitely a ship: what else could it be, a gray and oily little spot on the ocean horizon? Lynne had never seen one before, but there it was, appearing first as a dark speck, like a grim sunrise two hours late, blemishing the beautiful morning sky and drawing the eye away from the tranquility of the seashore. She leapt up from her seat on the hillside and tumbled a few carefree steps down the grassy slope toward the cliff, head jutting forward, eyes squinted, face alight. But nothing would bring the distant spot into focus except patience. The wind blew soft and salty, and the long grasses were still cool and slick with dew. It was definitely a ship, though. Lynne blinked one last time at the distant shape and rushed back into town.

Tokon was small, but it had been perched on the edge of the sea, waiting for just such a ship, for almost twenty years. And after all that time, when fishermen, sailors, children, and everyone in between was always gazing at the horizon, Lynne, whose best friend in the world the ship was coming for, had been the one to see it first. She was thrilled.

She ran up the uneven terrain of the hill until she hit the grassless dirt of the road, and then ran even faster. Her house loomed at the top of another hill nearby; she ignored it and kept going. Her father’s curtains were still drawn.

As she approached the threshold of town proper, a horse and cart came rattling in the other direction, driven by a man out on early business. “Good morning,” he called down to her. His horse sighed with annoyance.

“Morning!” Lynne responded, looking up at him. “A ship is coming!”

“A ship? No sails, you mean?”

But Lynne had already passed him with a wave, still sprinting at a dead run into town. Shops were warming up on either side of the street, windows getting cranked open to let in the cloudless sunlight. Lynne’s mad dash up the dirt road attracted some curious looks, but she met them all with “I saw a ship!” and kept on going.

“A ship? Are you sure?”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t know, a ship I guess.”

“It’s out there, go take a look!” Lynne assured them all breathlessly, as she went toward the wooden gymnasium near the bottom of the town, where the road sloped down.

She dug in her heels at the paintless front door, letting one of the boxers pass her.

“What’s good,” he said.

“I saw a ship at the beach!”

“No, for real? Here to tell Jeanette?”

“You know it!”

The boxer held the door open and let her go in first. The building was tall, and the unclouded sun came in through overhead windows that kept the gym only partially lit. The space was cool and focusing; it rang with the beautiful sounds of thudding bags and whirring ropes from people who had already been there for hours. Lynne loved this place. She wasn’t bothered by the smell or feel of sweat, which glistened on the athletes’ bodies like paint under the slanted light from the windows.

“Morning, Lynne,” said the owner, coming to greet her. “Jeanette’s downstairs.”

“I saw a ship!”

“A ship? Today’s the day?”

“Looks like it!”

Lynne moved carefully around the perimeter of bustling boxers. The ring in the center of the room was singing with bouncing feet, like the skin of a drum. Further back were the pommel horses and gymnastic rings. Lynne loved it here. But even though she was also a professional athlete, this gym wasn’t hers. It was Jeanette’s.

“Hey!” Lynne called down the stone well of the staircase, then bounded after her own voice into the basement, where Jeanette was sitting alone on a bare stone floor. Her equipment was simple, and the mats on the floor were thin.

She rose to her feet swiftly at Lynne’s arrival. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know, dude. But I know what day it is!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the day, Jeanette! A ship is inbound! I saw it with my own eyes, way off in the distance, and let me tell you, that’s no merchant sailor out there. It’s them. It’s today.”

Jeanette, though she had been caught in the middle of her workout, was still breathing more slowly and calmly than Lynne, her heartbeat well under sixty per minute. Her small eyes were relaxed under heavy lids, and her massive limbs moved steadily. “A ship,” she echoed.

Lynne nodded, skipping about. “How are we feeling, buddy? Are you ready? I was the first one to see it, too! I’ve already told a few people, on my way here. You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Pretty good morning. Started my intervals around three. Ocean should be warm enough for swimming in a few weeks. But I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“No it certainly does not! Come on, I’ll show you—race you to the beach!”

“Wait.” Jeanette’s body seemed to be made of tectonic plates: mountainous and silent, and hiding an astounding strength. “They’re here now?”

“Nah, they’re still pretty far out. I’m sure they’ll take their sweet time getting to shore, dropping anchor or whatever they do, and doing all their formalities and stuff. But they’re here! It’s today, man! Today is the day!” Lynne paused. “Are you nervous?”

“Eh. I just wish they’d given me some warning.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sudden.”

“Yeah. Okay then, let’s see this ship.”

“Okay!” Lynne shuffled back toward the staircase, but hesitantly. Jeanette was obviously reluctant to follow. Lynne tried again. “I agree with what you’re thinking, by the way. But keep on thinking! You’re not leaving your new life behind, you’re putting a whole new one on top of it! So many new things you’ll have, that neither of us can have any idea about. And we’ll all still be here, whenever you get back.”

Jeanette looked at her, breathing slowly, like a ship herself, and smiled in thanks.

“Now come on,” Lynne urged, and Jeanette finally uprooted herself and followed. Upstairs, the hollow pounding sounds of the punching bags swam back into earshot, and the smell of sweat closed back in on them. Jeanette received many more greetings than Lynne had. She had arrived before everyone else, before the earliest risers who started their warmups at dawn, before it could even be said to be morning—and this was many of the athletes’ first time seeing her that day. She smiled and waved as she went through the crowd, polite and quiet, a shy celebrity.

Lynne enjoyed the spotlight for her. She ushered Jeanette through like a celebrity’s bodyguard.

“I wish it were swimming season already,” Jeanette said as they went outside together. “The water is still too rough. I was looking forward to swimming in the sea in a few months. I was dumb enough to make plans. I forgot that any day here could have been my last.”

“You’ll get sick of the sea by the time you’re done with it. Imagine not seeing any land for weeks! I don’t know how they get mail, but I’ll be writing you regularly, so you can keep that in mind if it gets lonely. Want to race?”

“Sure.”

Lynne took off gleefully down the dirt road, her light jacket snapping behind her, heading back toward the cliffs above the beach. She didn’t bother to look behind at Jeanette.

The first clouds of the day drifted overhead, and the windy hills were starting to crawl with townspeople, leading goats of cattle, carrying baskets and buckets. They flinched or laughed or snapped in aggravation as Lynne sprinted past them, all dressed in shades of beige and brown against the bright green grasses of the hills. Far beyond them, the hills met the distant inland forests of the peninsula.

Near the edge of town, where the ground became lumpy, Jeanette appeared by Lynne’s side, catching up abruptly in mid-run, her tree-trunk legs rocketing effortlessly as she kept stride alongside her friend. “How far out was it?” she asked. Her voice didn’t sound any different from when she was standing still. “Is it near the shore yet, do you think?”

“Uh-huh,” Lynne gasped. She was a basketball player by trade, helping her father with their bills as the shooting guard of the local Tokon Ravens, but competing with Jeanette was starting to make her lungs hurt.

Jeanette, not in the mood for competition, hung back and let Lynne reach the cliffside first. Lynne thudded to a halt, face flushed. Jeanette slid up calmly behind her. “Oh, man.” She could see the ship now, unmistakable at this closer distance. “That’s them all right.”

Lynne was still catching her breath.

“It’s so sudden, Lynne. I can’t explain it. Every morning, when I wake up, a little voice asks me if today is the day. But over the years I’ve taught myself to ignore that little voice, because you can’t live like that. So it crept up on me. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

Lynne straightened up and inhaled mightily. “You’re right. That’s a crazy way to live. So it doesn’t make sense to blame yourself, huh?”

“Well, I can’t really blame them.”

“You can’t blame anyone. This is just life. The coolest part of life! You’re gonna meet as many new people as you’ll leave behind. More, maybe.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the race. You need to work on your cardio.”

“No I don’t.”

The sea breathed expansively before them. They had grown up on its shores together, but never sailed it. All they had ever done was what they were doing.

“I don’t really know where to go right now,” Jeanette said. “I mean, I guess I’ll head home and wash up, then start packing, saying good-byes. Whew! Oh no—I’m gonna get emotional.” She stared again over the ocean, steady and dry-eyed. “There they are, telling me what’s what. The ship hasn’t even reached us yet, and it’s already ordering me around.”

Lynne draped her arm around Jeanette’s shoulders. “I’ll stick by you if you want—if you don’t want to be alone right now.”

“That sounds nice. Thank you.”

“Let’s go to your place. I don’t want to deal with my dad anyway.”

“Yeah. I kind of have to be at my place. My PR guys and sponsors are probably there already, now that the ship is close enough for everyone to see.”

“Wow. What would happen if you just, like, never showed up?”

“Well, that’s illegal. They’d track me down.”

“Oh.”

Jeanette looked homeward, back across town. Like Lynne, her house was up on one of the hillsides overlooking the sea. Steep runs weren’t an issue for her, but they were for Lynne.

“Okay, hop on,” she said, kneeling down.

“Seriously?”

“I don’t want to be late.”

“Late for what? The ship hasn’t even reached land yet.”

“I want to say bye to my mom.”

Lynne frowned, then climbed onto Jeanette’s broad shoulders. And Jeanette, legs pumping evenly like a metronome, took off up the hill, bearing Lynne’s weight without effort, breathing gently and easily all the way home.

There was an automobile parked outside the Sebastians’ house. It was largely metal and stank acridly of smoke, like a miniature of the inbound ship. Jeanette let Lynne down and composed herself, showing no sign of strain from having just carried the other girl up the hill.

“A car!” Lynne exclaimed, rushing to examine the machine. “A real horseless car!” She stepped back, her grin suddenly faltering. “They got here so fast. Were they just perched at the ready, staring at the horizon for a ship? I mean, I guess I was too. But I’m allowed.”

“It’s the PR people. They help with the press and sponsors and stuff. My house is going to be very crowded today. You might have fun.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Then neither will I, honey. I’ll be angry for you. Your angry bodyguard.”

“Thank you.”

They went inside and closed the door. Lynne and Jeanette both lived in wooden huts, of a type that was common along the whole peninsula—pleasant and strongly constructed, but too intimate to feel comfortable with numerous guests.

And even before Jeanette’s mother had peeked around the bend of the hall, they came upon Mr. Ruddenfeld, Jeanette’s public relations specialist, gangly and obnoxious in a small brown suit that was fancy and drab at the same time, and his two stone-faced assistants carrying clipboards in tow.

“Miss Sebastian, finally!” Mr. Ruddenfeld exclaimed. “The press are hauling their behinds over here as we speak. How fast can you bathe? Wait, skip the bath, you’re not sweating. Who is this? Linda? Fine, she can keep your mother company: Jacinda is a nervous wreck, and I cannot deal with her right now. Huang says the ship will make landfall in less than an hour. You don’t have to bathe, but can you at least change? We talked about your outfit, right? Linda, go placate Jeanette’s mom.”

“Uh, no,” Lynne said. “How about you take a deep breath and count to ten, you’re stressing everybody out.”

“It’s a very stressful situation, little lady! These guys mean business! In case it hasn’t occurred to you, this is the most important day of your friend’s life, and possibly mine. We’re gonna have the sportswear people over here, the elixir people, probably NETFA, all crammed into this house—and then the press! It is a very stressful day, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it, so go give Jacinda a hug and make her a pot of tea before I kick you out of your best friend’s house!”

“Also my name is Lynne.”

“That does not refute anything I just said.”

Jacinda Sebastian finally emerged from her hiding spot. “Hello, sweetie!” she called to Jeanette.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Good morning, Lynne. You don’t have to endure this, I know it’s a lot.”

“Good morning, Miss Jacy. I told Jeanette I’d be her bodyguard for the day.”

“Oh, bless you. You know, what’s worse than all the commotion is feeling useless. Jeanette, I wish I could help you, baby. I have your suitcases all open on your bed.”

“Thanks, Mom. You don’t need to help, though. In fact, I don’t really have to do anything at all, except exist.”

Ruddenfeld had no interest in these niceties. His stationed his two wingmen at the house’s seaside window, looking out over the windy hillside to the beach, where the ship was fast approaching,  “Jeanette?” he implored. “Clothes? Now, please?”

She nodded and strolled off to her bedroom, leaving her mother and Lynne behind.

“This doesn’t have to be stressful,” Lynne insisted to Ruddenfeld. “So she has a boat to catch. Everything else is optional. All these sponsors and reporters—did Jeanette or Miss Jacy invite them? No, it was you. So feel free to have your conniption fit, but let Jeanette be chill. The ship is enough pressure already!”

“Those sponsors pay Jacinda’s bills, little lady, and they paid for that whole gym built in Jeanette’s name, and all of her training equipment. That stuff isn’t cheap!”

“What training equipment? She has a floor mat and a jump-rope.”

“I’m arguing with a child. Huang, look: I’m actually arguing with a kid. How old are you Lynne, twenty? Excuse me if I focus on the person in this house who has merit.”

“Would you like a cup of tea, Lynne?” Jacinda asked, cutting in.

“No, Miss Sebastian,” barked Ruddenfeld, “don’t ask her for a cup of tea—I told her to make you one! Lynne needs to take care of you, not the other way around.”

“Well, Mr. Ruddenfeld, maybe taking care of Lynne will make me feel better.”

“Fine. Ugh. Why am I being this family’s therapist right now? Do what you want. Huang!” he shouted, turning to his assistant. “What’s happening?”

“They’re about to start docking, sir.”

Jeanette emerged from her room, dressed in a shirt and blazer, her hair down.

“Perfect, beautiful!” cried Ruddenfeld. “And the daguerreotypists will bring their makeup people, so don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, you can worry a little bit.”

Lynne sidled up next to Huang at the window, peering out over the hill. Tokon’s little fishing harbor was overwhelmed by the ship, a massive building of floating black metal, monolithic and unadorned, strapped together with bolts the size of the window she was looking through, and topped by a towering chimney. Several people had gathered at the harbor to gawk, and more were joining them.

“How do you get on and off it?” she asked.

“They’ll lower a gangplank,” Huang explained, in a tone of refreshing detachment. “Then they’ll set up a pier for the initiation. A large section of the ship’s lower levels can be unfolded and removed for that purpose. Like intestines.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s just what I’ve been told. Remember, Jeanette is the only person of merit any of us have actually met.”

“You mean Ruddenfeld too? This is his first rodeo, and his confidence is through the roof? I hope something goes wrong today.”

“That’s unnecessary, ma’am. We’re just here to work.”

Lynne pointed at Ruddenfeld, who was hip-deep in another lecture for Jeanette. “She was so nervous about today, and now I know why. It’s you guys! You’re taking the adventure of a lifetime and turning it into a job.”

“This conversation is making me very uncomfortable.”

“Okay, fine. Sorry.”

“However, I will tell you one more thing. Your friend isn’t nervous merely because of us. This is not a game. The people on that ship have a monumental purpose for Miss Sebastian, and her fulfillment of that purpose is a grave matter.”

“Well, yeah, I know that. It’s still cool, though! You could all afford to lighten up.”

“Are you here in any kind of professional capacity?”

“What? No. I’m a basketball player.”

The door shook with a sudden knock, and Ruddenfeld rushed over to answer it before Jacinda could react. With a loud “Ah!” he stood aside and admitted an array of colorfully dressed people, followed by a more subdued group carrying haversacks and wooden crates. The Sebastian house filled up very quickly.

The new group’s leader, decked out in shiny blue, walked up to Lynne. “Miss Sebastian, it’s a pleasure! We’re here on behalf of the Enkidu Shoe Factory—”

“Seriously? I’m not Jeanette; she is.” Lynne pointed.

The representative followed her finger carefully, as if worried that he wouldn’t be able to track where it was pointing. He looked from Jeanette to Lynne and back again, his face scrunched in confusion. “You’re Jeanette?”

“Yeah. Uh, yes, sir.”

The rep glanced at Ruddenfeld, who nodded almost regretfully.

“Shouldn’t the jittery one be the one who never gets tired?”

“Yeah, I’m exhausted, man. That’s Jeanette. I have no merit.”

The rep pursed his lips and then addressed Jeanette. “Miss Sebastian, a pleasure. We’re from the Enkidu Shoe Factory. Can I offer you anything? Have you had breakfast?”

“I don’t eat.”

“Oh. Right, I forgot. That’s a very easy thing to forget, you know. Okay everyone, just…set your stuff down on the floor— Hello, are you the mother? Should we clear off a table?”

Jeanette glanced at Lynne imploringly, and she drifted back to her friend’s side. The two stood quietly together and braced one another as the shoe representatives began unpacking their merchandise and setting up lights for the daguerreotypes.

“Today’s the day, today’s the day,” Ruddenfeld chanted. “The three scariest words you can say, right?”

“Eh.” The shoe rep dismissed him and looked at Lynne instead. “This is the best friend? If she’s the best friend, then I want her on the plate. What’s your name?”

“Lynne, and I—”

“Carlos! Come over here and get Lynne’s shoe size. How much time do we have left?”

Carlos laboriously set his boxes down and peeked out the window. “They’ve got the gangplank down, and they’re setting up. Nice crowd of people already.”

“Perfect. They’d better stay down there.”

“No, it’s not perfect,” Ruddenfeld corrected the shoe rep. “They’ll be sending an enforcer up here at any moment! And that’s our clock. The moment they send a guy up, we gotta be out of here, or else they’ll remove us.”

“Carlos, her shoe size?” the shoe rep repeated.

“Are you ever going to ask me if I want to be in the shoot?” Lynne said.

“That’s absurd, of course you do.”

Lynne peered through the window again. True to what Carlos from the Enkidu Shoe Factory had said, the massive black ship was unfurling a temporary pier, a kind of stage for the thick crowd of people waiting on the sandy hills. The sunlight was a bright silver against the sand and the water, but it painted nothing onto the ship’s dull surface, leaving it uncanny and lifeless and plunked into the water like a cyst. She had thought these corporate sponsor people were sucking all of the romanticism and adventure out of the whole business, but this ugly ship had none of those things to begin with.

Another knock sounded on the door, and this time only Lynne seemed to notice. Fuming at her reduction from bodyguard to housekeeper, she stomped over to the entrance, planning to tell this new batch of sponsors to kindly piss off, and was instead met by two armored police officers in masked helmets.

One of them, losing no time, produced a sheet of paper from his pocket and began to read in a voice muffled by his mask and by the ruckus inside. Lynne squinted and cupped her ear, and the two officers stepped back and beckoned for her to join them. She did so, closing the door behind her, and the sound of the cold wind instantly filled her ears.

The two law-enforcers stood motionless in front of her. Their masks were eerily insectoid, with large oblong lenses like the eyes of a praying mantis. One wore a breastplate (presumably not his own) that had been stabbed clean through, the fatal mark accompanied by some sentimental symbol painted next to it. The other had white straps around his arms and a mostly empty bandolier of crossbow bolts.

He read out: “This is an official summons of Jeanette Sebastian to the Hintredon Academy of Merit, by decree of the Federal Order of Merit and Capital, and by its Holder of Superior Merit, Ben Roag of Hintredon Island.”

“Yes!” Lynne exclaimed, yanking the door open again. “Get all these people out!”

Wordlessly, the two cops stepped past Lynne into the house, and within seconds only Jeanette and Jacinda remained inside.

I suppose my broadest goal with THE PANTHEON was to bring my favorite indulgent qualities of the Young Adult adventure genre into a more mature (or “literary”) form. Though it has a plot that blends X-Men with Harry Potter, I attempted a deeper narrative focus than what is associated, fairly or not, with YA adventure novels, and brought in social themes that are more politically radical. Aside from telling a modern, progressive story, these subtexts also allowed me to cut through to the story’s conflict and capture it in a single novel, rather than a trilogy or series. I almost wished it was bigger.

The seed of THE PANTHEON is an action-packed yarn that I hope captures on the page the excitement I feel when watching unhinged martial-arts films such as Police Story and John Wick, in which a beleaguered, put-upon, and ultimately lovable hero drags himself through endless miles of unthinkable odds and crosses the finish line with an exhausted thumbs-up. But while the book does have scenes of intense, glorified combat violence, I pretty quickly forgot the premise of wall-to-wall action when I focused on my characters. Their depth, I hope, justifies the plot’s familiarity.

I love superheroes, but I think THE PANTHEON qualifies as superhero fiction only insofar as Beowulf also does. It shares many of the same themes, but I wanted to pull my own weight in this well-trodden territory, with characterizations and storytelling that can be taken seriously anywhere, regardless of the book’s placement in pop culture.